“What if the girls want to do it? How about then? To get it over with. To hold the power, like Amanda Shire told us.” I don’t know why I said this. Maybe I was testing him. Maybe I wanted to know if he’d see me that way. The way those guys did that day. Looking down on me that way.
After the Initiation, I felt like people were staring at me. Not just because we were considered royalty all of a sudden. But because it felt like the whole school knew what I did. Like they knew what I was asked to do to those guys.
I was floating around so confused and angry when I was a freshman and sophomore. Hooking up with older guys. Bashing freshman girls. Being with Dev did something to me. It stunted some of my shame. Not all of it, but a lot.
Any of the feelings I’ve been having for Sean lately—I’ve got to erase them. I’m embarrassed for even thinking about him. I’ve got to crush them, even if it’s just for Dev.
* * *
Sean and I are in my bedroom. There’s a white glow between us. A warm light. Like spring. Like the way the sun shines on you in a hot meadow. But then it starts to feel dangerous, and I can’t breathe. Sean is sitting on top of me, and I’m saying, Sean, Sean, I can’t breathe. I can’t get up. Someone grabs my hair from behind and people are laughing. Sean is laughing. Why are you laughing? I scream. I look over and see Donnie on her knees crying.
I open my eyes.
I’m in my room.
The clock says three A.M. I hear my mother sniffling in the hallway. I jump out of bed and run to her.
Her face is a mess. White and puffy. Like she’s been sitting there for a long time.
“Where’s Daddy?” I say.
“He took a sleeping pill. I shook him and shook him, and he can’t get up. He was drinking earlier. He shouldn’t have done both.”
“Well, Jesus, Mom, is he breathing?”
“Of course he’s breathing, Blythe. I would have called 911.”
“What about you, Mom? Did you take your medication?”
“I took it, but it’s not working.” She’s rubbing her hands through her hair, but then they just land on the crown of her head like they’re stuck and she can’t move them. “My body chemistry is changing again, Blythe. None of the meds are working anymore. Everything is just falling apart all over again.”
I sit down next to her, even though I don’t want to. I don’t want to touch her. I don’t want to kiss her. But she’s crying and she can’t stop. I can’t do anything but help her. I can’t do anything but tell her it’s okay. I feel like this is my new saying lately. This is what I’ve been telling everyone. My mom. Ali Greenleaf. Sean. Everyone.
Who is going to tell me?
Before the medication, my mother was so unpredictable. When I was younger, she was exciting in a way even though it was a roller coaster being around her. I thought it was cool when she woke me up at one A.M. to go on a night walk when we had a place in Upstate New York because that’s the only time you can see the stars, in the middle of the night when all the lights are really, truly off. It didn’t matter that I was in my pajamas, or not in any shoes at all. Or that the ground was cold, or that I was stepping on rocks. Keep going, Blythe. Keep going. Keep pressing on.
Then there was the time she brought me to this big adventure park down in South Jersey when I was eleven years old and left me there.
“It’s time to teach you about materialism. See all these people here with their short shorts and their cotton candy and their SpongeBob rides? They’re all falling into something called consumerism. The only way for you to not be anywhere near that is to immerse yourself in it without me. I want you to be scared of it, Blythe. I want you to be fearful of it because no one should live like this.”
I walked around for a while buying myself popcorn and juice and then, after going on something called the Dare Devil Dive four times in a row, I finally puked right next to a young mom and her daughter.
“Who are you here with?” she said, wiping my mouth. That’s when I said, “My mother left me here.” So she called the police and then my father came.
It was breathtaking how concerned people were. You can’t just leave your daughter at a park, apparently. My father and my grandmother excused it up to the hilt, but the police don’t deal with incidents that way. They pressed charges against her. That was the first time my mother was hospitalized. Bipolar.
My father started taking me to my shrink then. The same person I’m seeing now.
“It’s okay that you feel bad that your mother is in the hospital, Blythe. But no matter what you think, it’s not your fault,” my therapist told me at the time.
I never thought it was my fault, by the way. They say this to kids a lot. It’s not your fault.
“I don’t think it’s my fault at all,” I told her.
“Oh? Okay. Good.”
“I was glad not to be around her,” I said. I think I was hoping for a reaction, but she only gave me a twitch. “I had those few hours there by myself at the park, alone without her acting nuts or starting a fight with someone because she thought they ripped her off. Do you know how many fights she starts with everyone? Do you know how embarrassing it is to be
